Murphy's Rules For xxx

[LPatterson]

Murphy's Rules for Combat

01. Military intelligence is a contradiction of terms.

02. A sucking chest wound is Nature's way of telling you to slow down.

03. When you have secured an area, don't forget to tell the enemy.

04. The problem with taking the easy way out, is that the enemy has already mined it.

05. The buddy system is essential to your survival. It gives the enemy somebody else to shoot at.

06. Never draw fire, it irritates everyone around you.

07. No combat ready unit ever passed an inspection.

08. No inspection ready unit ever passed combat

09. Make it too tough for the enemy to get in and you can't get out.

10. Fortify your front and you'll get your rear shot up.

11. If you can't remember, the claymore is pointed towards you.

12. All five second grenade fuses are three seconds, or all five second fuses will burn out in three.

13. If it flies, it dies.

14. Cavalry doesn't always come to the rescue.

15. Peace is our profession, mass murder's just a hobby.

16. Killing for peace is like whoring for virginity.

17. There's always a way.

18. It's not the one with your name on it, it's the round addressed "to whom it may concern" ya gotta think about.

19. If you can keep your head while those around you are losing theirs, you may have misjudged the situation.

20. If two things are required to make something work, they will never be shipped together.

21. Anything you do can get you shot, including nothing.

22. Whenever you lose contact with the enemy, look behind you.

23. The most dangerous thing in the combat zone is an officer with a map.

24. The quartermaster has only two sizes, too large and too small.

25. If you really need an officer in a hurry, take a nap.

26. There is nothing more satisfying than having someone take a shot at you, and miss.

27. If your sergeant can see you, so can the enemy.

28. You'll only remember your hand grenades when the sound is too close to use them.

[LPatterson]

MURPHY'S LAWS FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT

The newly elected Sheriff is not the one you voted for, and he knows it!

Court will be scheduled in the middle of your day off.

Hot calls will only come over the air 10 minutes before the end of your shift.

Surprise inspections will only occur after you have been in a foot pursuit through mud.

The Mayor will get arrested for DWI the day before your department negotiates for a salary increase.

Pens never leak onto old uniform shirts.

To err is human, to forgive is against department policy.

You will find a "police discount" one day before payday.

You will remain in perfect health until your days off.

No patrol car assigned to you will be clean or ever have a full tank of gas.

Wearing white socks makes boot zippers break.

The oldest squad car won't be retired. It will be assigned to you.

Coffee jitters will never bother you until firearms qualification day.

Flashlight batteries never die in the daylight hours.

Your loudest traffic violator will be related to the Sheriff, or the Mayor.

You will score no higher than fourth on a promotion exam with only three positions.

Perfect 10's only show up to talk when you are busy.

NCIC will be down anytime you see a car listed on a hot sheet.

Old squad cars never die, they just smell that way.

You will never get a bomb threat, or a barricade call until the specialized squads are away on training.

The experience of your DA is inversely proportional to the importance of the case he is prosecuting.

Word processors only delete reports when they are nearly done.

Your bullet proof vest was supplied by the lowest bidder.

You receive a subpoena for the Mayor's DWI trial, the first day of your paid for, non-refundable vacation.

In a physical confrontation involving more than one officer, any impact weapon used will strike cops more times than crooks.

Do unto others, but do it first.

Eat right. Exercise. Die anyway.

Your squad car will only break down when you are outside your beat.

Waterproof boots aren't.

Freebies will only arrive at the station on your days off.

There is an inverse relationship between the number of auto club stickers on a rear bumper and how well the person drives.

You are ALWAYS downwind from OC Spray.

To err is human, just do it in front of as few people as possible!

Anyone that flirts with you on-duty won't even recognize you off-duty.

The hardest job for a Hostage Negotiator is to negotiate with the crisis committee!

No one's idea is a good idea until it becomes another's idea........usually the Chief's.

If your patrol car's air conditioning is out, the suspect will smell worse than a wet dog.

The quartermaster has only two sizes, too large and too small.

The only time suppressive fire works is when it is used on abandoned positions.

There is nothing more satisfying that having someone take a shot at you, and miss.

All great discoveries are made by mistake.

The first myth of management is that it exists.

After all is said and done, a hell of a lot more is said than done.

The only perfect science is hindsight.

If it's not in the computer, it doesn't exist.

If there is a possibility of several things going wrong the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.

The best things in the world are free--and worth every penny of it.

If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.

Whenever you set out to do something, something else must be done first.

The more a weapon costs, the farther you will have to send it away to be repaired.

Field experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

Anything you do can get you shot, including nothing.

[LPatterson]

Murphy's Laws Of Combat Operations

Friendly fire - isn't.

Recoilless rifles - aren't.

Suppressive fires - won't.

You are not Superman; Marines and fighter pilots take note.

A sucking chest wound is Nature's way of telling you to slow down.

If it's stupid but it works, it isn't stupid.

Try to look unimportant; the enemy may be low on ammo and not want to waste a bullet on you.

If at first you don't succeed, call in an airstrike.

If you are forward of your position, your artillery will fall short.

Never share a foxhole with anyone braver than yourself.

Never go to bed with anyone crazier than yourself.

Never forget that your weapon was made by the lowest bidder.

If your attack is going really well, it's an ambush.

The enemy diversion you're ignoring is their main attack.

The enemy invariably attacks on two occasions: when they're ready. & when you're not.

No OPLAN ever survives initial contact.

There is no such thing as a perfect plan.

Five second fuzes always burn three seconds.

There is no such thing as an atheist in a foxhole.

A retreating enemy is probably just falling back and regrouping.

The important things are always simple; the simple are always hard.

The easy way is always mined.

Teamwork is essential; it gives the enemy other people to shoot at.

Don't look conspicuous; it draws fire. For this reason, it is not at all uncommon for aircraft carriers to be known as bomb magnets.

Never draw fire; it irritates everyone around you.

If you are short of everything but the enemy, you are in the combat zone.

When you have secured the area, make sure the enemy knows it too.

Incoming fire has the right of way.

No combat ready unit has ever passed inspection.

No inspection ready unit has ever passed combat.

If the enemy is within range, so are you.

The only thing more accurate than incoming enemy fire is incoming friendly fire.

Things which must be shipped together as a set, aren't.

Things that must work together, can't be carried to the field that way.

Radios will fail as soon as you need fire support.

Radar tends to fail at night and in bad weather, and especially during both.

Anything you do can get you killed, including nothing.

Make it too tough for the enemy to get in, and you won't be able to get out.

Tracers work both ways.

If you take more than your fair share of objectives, you will get more than your fair share of objectives to take.

When both sides are convinced they're about to lose, they're both right.

Professional soldiers are predictable; the world is full of dangerous amateurs.

Military Intelligence is a contradiction.

Fortify your front; you'll get your rear shot up.

Weather ain't neutral.

If you can't remember, the Claymore is pointed towards you.

Air defense motto: shoot 'em down; sort 'em out on the ground.

'Flies high, it dies; low and slow, it'll go.

The Cavalry doesn't always come to the rescue.

Napalm is an area support weapon.

Mines are equal opportunity weapons.

B-52s are the ultimate close support weapon.

Sniper's motto: reach out and touch someone.

Killing for peace is like screwing for virginity.

The one item you need is always in short supply.

Interchangeable parts aren't.

It's not the one with your name on it; it's the one addressed "to whom it may concern" you've got to think about.

When in doubt, empty your magazine.

The side with the simplest uniforms wins.

Combat will occur on the ground between two adjoining maps.

If you can keep your head while those around you are losing theirs, you may have misjudged the situation.

If two things are required to make something work, they will never be shipped together.

Anything you do can get you shot, including nothing.

Whenever you lose contact with the enemy, look behind you.

The most dangerous thing in the combat zone is an officer with a map.

The quartermaster has only two sizes, too large and too small.

If you really need an officer in a hurry, take a nap.

There is nothing more satisfying than having someone take a shot at you, and miss.

If your sergeant can see you, so can the enemy.

You'll only remember your hand grenades when the sound is too close to use them.

Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.

So he said, "Cheer up: it could be worse!" So we cheered up. And it got worse.

Well .. It could be worse: It could be raining .. and we could be out in it.

The side with the simplest uniform wins...

The spare batteries for the PRC-whatever your troops have been carrying are either nearly dead or for the wrong radio.

The ping you heard was the antenna snapping off at 6 inches above the flexmount, while a fire mission was being called in on a battalion of hostiles who know your position.

Why is it the CO sticks his head in your radio hooch to see if anything has come down from DIV when you are listening to the VOA broadcasting the baseball games?

How come you are on one frequency when everyone else is on another?

Why does your 500-watt VRC-26 (real old) not make it across 200 miles while a ham with 50 watts on the same MARS frequency can be heard from Stateside?

Know why short RTOs have long whips on their radios? So someone can find them when they step in deep water.

The enemy "Alway's" times his attack, to the second you drop your pant's in the Latrine!!

The ammo you need "NOW"!! is on the "Next" airdrop!!

[LPatterson]

Murphy's Laws of Commerce

The first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time, the last 10% takes the other 90% of the time.

If you can't get your work done in the first 24 hours, work nights.

A pat on the back is only a few inches from a kick in the pants.

Don't be irreplaceable, if you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted.

It doesn't matter what you do, it only matters what you say you've done and what you say you're going to do.

After any salary raise, you will have less money at the end of the month than you did before.

The more crap you put up with, the more crap you are going to get.

You can go anywhere you want if you look serious and carry a clipboard.

Eat one live toad first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.

Never ask two questions in a business letter. The reply will discuss the one you are least interested in, and say nothing about the other.

When the bosses talk about improving productivity, they are never talking about themselves.

If at first you don't succeed, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it.

There will always be beer cans rolling on the floor of your car when the boss asks for a ride home from the office.

The boss is always right.

Mother said there would be days like this, but she never said there would be so many.

Keep your boss's boss off your boss's back.

Everything can be filed under "miscellaneous".

Never delay the ending of a meeting or the beginning of a cocktail hour.

To err is human, to forgive is not company policy.

In case of an atomic bomb attack, work rules will be temporarily suspended.

Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing.

Important letters that contain no errors will develop errors in the mail.

The last person that quit or was fired will be the one held responsible for

everything that goes wrong - until the next person quits or is fired.

There is never enough time to do it right the first time, but there is always enough time to do it over.

The more pretentious a corporate name, the smaller the organization.

If you are good, you will be assigned all the work. If you are really good, you will get out of it.

You are always doing something marginal when the boss drops by your desk.

If someone says he will do something "without fail", he won't.

People who go to conferences are the ones who shouldn't.

People are always available for work in the past tense.

People don't make the same mistake twice, they make it three, four, or five times.

If it wasn't for the last minute, nothing would get done.

At work, the authority of a person is inversely proportional to the number of pens that person is carrying.

When you don't know what to do, walk fast and look worried.

You will always get the greatest recognition for the job you least like.

No one gets sick on Wednesdays.

Getting the job done is no excuse for not following the rules.

Following the rules will not get the job done.

When confronted by a difficult problem you can solve it more easily by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?".

No matter how much you do, you never do enough.

The longer the title, the less important the job.

Machines that have broken down will work perfectly when the repairman arrives.

Progress is only made on alternate Tuesdays.

An "acceptable" level of employment means that the government economist to whom it is acceptable still has a job.

Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only makes it worse.

The employee who has performed his duties faithfully and without fault for 5 years will be given an increase of five cents per day in his pay - provided the profits allow it.

All vacations and holidays create problems, except for one's own.

Success is a matter of luck, just ask any failure.

The value of any job task is inversely proportional to its deadline.

[LPatterson]

Murphy's Law The Army Weather Corollaries

Inclement weather always begins AFTER you've already done PT.

A sudden downpour always occurs at the end of a summer field exercise--just in time coat all your equipment and camouflage with mud.

The best beach weather always occurs when you are in the field wearing MOPP 4.

There is no such thing as a blue sky during a company picnic.

There is no such thing as a cloudy sky when your unit needs to infiltrate enemy territory.

Road conditions are always red when it's time to convoy home.

Motor pools are always 20 degrees warmer than the rest of the post during the summer and 50 degrees colder in the winter.

Army training areas exist in a constant state of weather flux controlled by a deity with a truly cruel sense of humor--How do you think we got them so cheap?

The peak of Mt. Everest would flood if an Army unit was told to set up on it.

Hell really would freeze over if someone decided to conduct an exercise there.

The Port-a-Potty Postulate states that the likelihood of a hurricane, sandstorm, tsunami, or blizzard occurring immediately over your location is directly related to how bad you need to get to the portajohns at the other side of the campsite in the middle of the night.

The temperature always rises to 70 degrees AFTER you put on two layers of polypros, your bear suit, and all of your Gortex.

If you whine about the weather, someone else will always whine louder.

[LPatterson]

Murphy's Teaching Laws

The clock in the instructor's room will be wrong.

Disaster will occur when visitors are in the room.

A subject interesting to the teacher will bore students.

The time a teacher takes in explaining is inversely proportional to the information retained by students.

A meeting's length will be directly proportional to the boredom the speaker produces.

Students who are doing better are credited with working harder. If children start to do poorly, the teacher will be blamed.

The problem child will be a school board member's son.

When the instructor is late, he will meet the principal in the hall.

If the instructor is late and does not meet the principal, the instructor is late to the faculty meeting.

New students come from schools that do not teach anything.

Good students move away.

When speaking to the school psychologist, the teacher will say: "weirdo" rather than "emotionally disturbed".

The school board will make a better pay offer before the teacher's union negotiates.

The instructor's study hall be the largest in several years.

The administration will view the study hall as the teacher's preparation time.

Clocks will run more quickly during free time.

On a test day, at least 15% of the class will be absent

If the instructor teaches art, the principal will be an ex-coach and will dislike art. If the instructor is a coach, the principal will be an ex-coach who took a winning team to the state.

Murphy's Law will go into effect at the beginning of an evaluation.

Weiner's Law of Libraries

There are no answers, only cross references.

Laws of Class Scheduling

If the course you wanted most has room for "n" students, you will be the "n+1" to apply.

Class schedules are designed so that every student will waste maximum time between classes.

Corollary: When you are occasionally able to schedule two classes in a row, they will be held in classrooms at opposite ends of the campus.

A prerequisite for a desired course will be offered only during the semester following the desired course.

Laws of Applied Terror

When reviewing your notes before an exam, the most important ones will be illegible.

The more studying you did for the exam, the less sure you are as to which answer they want

Eighty percent of the final exam will be based on the one lecture you missed about the one book you didn't read.

The night before the English history midterm, your Biology instructor will assign two hundred pages on planarian.

Corollary: Every instructor assumes that you have nothing else to do except study for that instructor's course.

If you are given an open-book exam, you will forget your book.

Corollary: If you are given a take home exam, you will forget where you live.

At the end of the semester you will recall having enrolled in a course at the beginning of the semester--and never attending.

First Law of Final Exams

Pocket calculator batteries that have lasted all semester will fail during the math final.

Corollary: If you bring extra batteries, they will be defective.

Second Law of Final Exams

In your toughest final, the most distractingly attractive student in class will sit next to you for the first time.

Seeger's Law

Anything in parentheses can be ignored.

Natalie' Law of Calculus

You never catch on until after the test.

Seit's Law of Higher Education

The one course you must take to graduate will not be offered during you last semester.

Rule of the Term Paper

The book or periodical most vital to the completion of your term paper will be missing from the library.

Corollary: If it is available, the most important page will be torn out.

Duggan's Law of Scholarly Research

The most valuable quotation will be the one for which you cannot determine the source.

Corollary: The source for an un-attributed quotation will appear in the most hostile review of you work.

Rominger's Rules for Students

The more general the title of a course, the less you will learn from it.

The more specific a title is, the less you will be able to apply it later.

Hansen's Library Axiom

The closest library doesn't have the material you need.

London's Law of Libraries

No matter which book you need, it's on the bottom shelf.

Rominger's Rules for Teachers

When a student asks for a second time if you have read his book report, he did not read the book.

If attendance is mandatory, a scheduled exam will produce increased absenteeism. If attendance is optional, an exam will produce persons you have never seen before.

Penza's law about math's lessons

The porter will knock at the door at the most crucial point of the lesson.

[LPatterson]

Murphy's Computers Laws

Any given program, when running, is obsolete.

Any given program costs more and takes longer each time it is run.

If a program is useful, it will have to be changed.

If a program is useless, it will have to be documented.

Any given program will expand to fill all the available memory.

The value of a program is inversely proportional to the weight of its output.

Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of the programmer who must maintain it.

Every non- trivial program has at least one bug

Corollary 1 - A sufficient condition for program triviality is that it have no bugs.

Corollary 2 - At least one bug will be observed after the author leaves the organization.

Bugs will appear in one part of a working program when another 'unrelated' part is modified.

The subtlest bugs cause the greatest damage and problems.

Corollary - A subtle bug will modify storage thereby masquerading as some other problem.

Lulled into Security Law

A 'debugged' program that crashes will wipe out source files on storage devices when there is the least available backup.

A hardware failure will cause system software to crash, and the customer engineer will blame the programmer.

A system software crash will cause hardware to act strangely and the programmers will blame the customer engineer.

Undetectable errors are infinite in variety, in contrast to detectable errors, which by definition are limited.

Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.

Make it possible for programmers to write programs in English, and you will find that programmers can not write in English.

The documented interfaces between standard software modules will have undocumented quirks.

The probability of a hardware failure disappearing is inversely proportional to the distance between the computer and the customer engineer.

A working program is one that has only unobserved bugs.

No matter how many resources you have, it is never enough.

Any cool program always requires more memory than you have.

When you finally buy enough memory, you will not have enough disk space.

Disks are always full. It is futile to try to get more disk space. Data expands to fill any void.

If a program actually fits in memory and has enough disk space, it is guaranteed to crash.

If such a program has not crashed yet, it is waiting for a critical moment before it crashes.

No matter how good of a deal you get on computer components, the price will always drop immediately after the purchase.

All components become obsolete.

The speed with which components become obsolete is directly proportional to the price of the component.

Software bugs are impossible to detect by anybody except the end user.

The maintenance engineer will never have seen a model quite like yours before.

It is axiomatic that any spares required will have just been discontinued and will be no longer in stock.

Any VDU, from the cheapest to the most expensive, will protect a twenty cent fuse by blowing first.

Any manufacturer making his warranties dependent upon the device being earthed will only supply power cabling with two wires.

If a circuit requires n components, then there will be only n - 1 components in locally-held stocks.

A failure in a device will never appear until it has passed final inspection.

Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.

A program generator creates programs that are more buggy than the program generator.

A part dropped from the workbench will roll to a degree of un-reachability proportional to its importance.

In a transistor circuit protected by a fuse, the transistor will always blow to protect the fuse.

No matter how hard you work, the boss will only appear when you access the internet.

The hard drive on your computer will only crash when it contains vital information that has not been backed up.

Computers don't make errors-What they do they do on purpose.

[LPatterson]

Murphy's Technology Laws

You can never tell which way the train went by looking at the track.

Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence.

Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool discovers something which either abolishes the system or expands it beyond recognition.

Technology is dominated by those who manage what they do not understand.

If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.

The opulence of the front office decor varies inversely with the fundamental solvency of the firm.

The attention span of a computer is only as long as its electrical cord.

An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less until he knows absolutely everything about nothing.

Tell a man there are 300 billion stars in the universe and he'll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint on it and he'll have to touch to be sure.

All great discoveries are made by mistake.

Always draw your curves, then plot your reading.

Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget.

All's well that ends.

A meeting is an event at which the minutes are kept and the hours are lost.

The first myth of management is that it exists.

A failure will not appear till a unit has passed final inspection.

New systems generate new problems.

To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer.

We don't know one millionth of one percent about anything.

Any given program, when running, is obsolete.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

A computer makes as many mistakes in two seconds as 20 men working 20 years make.

The faster a computer is, the faster it will reach a crashed state.

Nothing motivates a man more than to see his boss putting in an honest day's work.

Some people manage by the book, even though they don't know who wrote the book or even what book.

The primary function of the design engineer is to make things difficult for the fabricator and impossible for the serviceman.

To spot the expert, pick the one who predicts the job will take the longest and cost the most.

After all is said and done, a hell of a lot more is said than done.

Any circuit design must contain at least one part which is obsolete, two parts which are unobtainable and three parts which are still under development.

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works.

If mathematically you end up with the incorrect answer, try multiplying by the page number.

Computers are unreliable, but humans are even more unreliable. Any system which depends on human reliability is unreliable.

Give all orders verbally. Never write anything down that might go into a "Pearl Harbor File."

Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure, temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables the organism will do as it damn well pleases.

If you can't understand it, it is intuitively obvious.

The more cordial the buyer's secretary, the greater the odds that the competition already has the order.

In designing any type of construction, no overall dimension can be totalled correctly after 4:30 p.m. on Friday. The correct total will become self-evident at 8:15 a.m. on Monday.

Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. And scratch where it itches.

All things are possible except skiing through a revolving door.

The only perfect science is hind-sight.

Work smarder and not harder and be careful of yor speling.

If it's not in the computer, it doesn't exist.

If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.

When all else fails, read the instructions.

If there is a possibility of several things going wrong the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong first.

Everything that goes up must come down.

Any instrument when dropped will roll into the least accessible corner.

Any simple theory will be worded in the most complicated way.

Build a system that even a fool can use and only a fool will want to use it.

The degree of technical competence is inversely proportional to the level of management.

[Merlin Orr]

I like em all!

[pisgahrifle]

The only thing I need to know about computers is that they're like children- if beaten thoroughly and threatened properly often enough, they'll behave just fine. This works, right?

[pisgahrifle]

Duggan's Law of Scholarly Research

The most valuable quotation will be the one for which you cannot determine the source.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAGH! This is actually true far to often. Why did you have to post all these right now, with the fall semester only two weeks away!!!! Especially since I just found out I have two classes of ninth graders!!!

[GuildSF4]

Duggan's Law of Scholarly Research

The most valuable quotation will be the one for which you cannot determine the source.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAGH! This is actually true far to often. Why did you have to post all these right now, with the fall semester only two weeks away!!!! Especially since I just found out I have two classes of ninth graders!!!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Ninth graders, I feel for you, I hear they are the worst.

[GuildSF4]

Murphy's Computers Laws

Every non- trivial program has at least one bug

Corollary 1 - A sufficient condition for program triviality is that it have no bugs.

Corollary 2 - At least one bug will be observed after the author leaves the organization.

Bugs will appear in one part of a working program when another 'unrelated' part is modified.

The subtlest bugs cause the greatest damage and problems.

Corollary - A subtle bug will modify storage thereby masquerading as some other problem.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Not bugs - "undocumented features".

[Genghis]

I heard a comedian suggest that teachers should get contingency fees like lawyers, based on a percentage of the student's lifetime earnings.

[stingerjg]

Everything above is completly true. Ive experienced it all.

[pisgahrifle]

I heard a comedian suggest that teachers should get contingency fees like lawyers, based on a percentage of the student's lifetime earnings.

Ooooooooh.... I like that......

[folsoml]

I'm kind of disappointed. I read the topic title and assumed this was about porno.